Nilaak kAdhal - Part V
Topic suggested by Babu on Sun Feb 21 11:07:45 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
...
Ѵ Í Ƴ. ̯. ՙ װ ?
" Ѵ ..."
Ѵ ב Ħ. ﴰ. ր
Ƒ.
". ώ. "
" Ѵ ? ՙ ?"
Ѵ ր. Ѵ Ϲ. ր
Ҁ .
"Ѵ ... Ѵ ?"
׀ ՙ, Ż Ѵ. 鹱Ϲ.
" ϙ. ."
" Ѵ... ՙ ?"
" 헍 ..." ݴ .
̀ 晍 Ϲ . ̑
̯ Ϲ.
" ϙ ?" Ѵ.
荀 ՙ.
" ."
" ՙ ב ?" ώϹ .
"ր. ź "
"ހ 晐 ?"
" ϥ"
"ՙ ׳ Ϲ ?"
"ր . ހ . ."
" ׳ Ƒ Ϲ ?"
촱Ƴ. ґ ƑƑ ? 㢜
̱俺 ? ґ ̑Ƒ ? ?
Ѣ ֺ ב ? Ѵǥ
ѹ ƑҀ ... ƑƑ ր ...
Ѵ : " 헍 흴 ?"
" Ѵ, ב ?"
"՛"
ґ ״ ב :
" ׀ Ѵ ϙ ź
Ϲ ր... ϙ... Ƒ Ž ׳
, װ ״ϙ. ׀ ٨
̴ 鹳 Ϲ. ̯ 㑍 ϴ ϙ
͎. 왍æƑ Ƒ 911 . Ӏ
ϙ. 쿽 ̫.
̫ Ϲϙ. ź ̑ Ϲ
晐 ב˿ր. ܗב -
鍦 鑙 Ž 鹰."
Ѵ ֍ ѹ. ր. , Ѣ
ʹ Í 洱Ϲ. "... ... " .
Ѵэ. э װ ت ,
Ϲ. Ƴ. Ѵ ״
Ϲ. љ Ϲ. ϙ
בր Ƴ. р Ϲ. ל̿
ت ? ހ تϙґ ? Ѵ
˰ ? ϥ ʹ ت ? ̫
̫ ? ր, ̫ Ͽ ?
헍ҙ 흙 ׯ ? Ƒ ґ ?
æ ׀ ѴǥϹ ب ґ ? ̙ ?
Ƴ ... ̿ ... ؟ź ... ґ
... ͍ Ƒ րҗ ϙ.
ހҿ ׳ ˱ ր. Ѵ ̀
괳 Ѵ Ϲ. בƳ. ѹϹ...
"Ѵ ..."
Ż. ב Ϲ. ׀ ̴ Ѵ. ր.
"' ."
Ѵ ե . ґ . Ż
̴ ѹ. ̫ґ Հ ґ
Ƴ ... ґ ... ґ ?
Żր.
" ... ... " Ѵ ׳ Ϲ Ϲ.
Ѵ ր. . .
̍ 鹰 Ѵ 乳 ,
Ϫ.
An Afterword:
This story is a pure fiction and was written in March,1997. Nandhini, Parthi and
Ezhil are just figments of my imagination.
There are a couple of things I would like to say at this point. There are some readers who may
not be happy with the way the story has ended. Some would say Ezhil's suicide is dramatic while
some would feel that the death is the ultimate shortcut, a ruse employed to circumvent the
paucity of solutions. I do not have convincing arguments to counter these, but I felt at the bottom
of my heart that a gay man has no other way out in our Indian society, with its hypocritical
morals and empty ideals. (That the story happens in the US does not change the fact that these
three are still Indians with Indian morals). Add to this Ezhil's character - he is a
downrightly honest (he tells it all to Nandhini when confronted) and hopelessly sentimental guy
( all that mazhai and nilAk kaathals)....
....And I had the shock of my life, when two months back - almost two years after I wrote this story -
I got to know that one person I know (who was in India and had just got married) committed
suicide and his newly wedded wife suggested to me later that he might have been a closet-gay.
Who says life does not imitate art ?
Babu
Responses:
- Old responses
- From: babu (@ 198.153.135.42)
on: Thu Feb 25 18:51:55
pae, Nandhini does not 'figure out' anything, she just does not like ezhil being close to her husband.
And, there is a very thin line between friendship and Love ( as ezhil himself explains in the story ) and the fact that paarthi does not think otherwise about ezhil is quite natural IMO
- From: Babu (@ 198.153.135.42)
on: Thu Feb 25 19:12:05
Chandra, thanks. As always your analysis is deep and excellent.
It is mainly because the story somehow has not conveyed how pArththi had no inkling of the homosexual motive of and advances made by ezhil. And how much ezhil had tried to make pArththi understand his feelings. Actually it is not clear
where ezhil had intended to take his feelings for pArththi; this, notwithstanding his discussion with nan-dhini at the restaurant.
As my previous posting for pae says there is always a very tenuous line between love and frienship. And I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that ezhil made 'advances' towards paarthiban. Ezhil says, when telling-it-all to nanadhini, that he was quite satisfied with the way his life was - just to live, seeing paarthiban whenever he feels like. So ezhil had no intention of making paarthi know about his intentions. If not for nandhini and his guilt, he would have remained in closet all his life. These points have mentioned in his long talk to Nandhini, though not explicitly and not exactly in these words.
If pArhthi were not gay, he would certainly have felt revulsion, more than n-andhini did, at some of the "petting" made by ezhil; if he were,
then I would have expected different description of his behavior.
"petting" ? Do you mean the kiss he gives paarthiban when paarthiban visits his house ? If you try to see from without knowing that ezhil is a gay, you would not call it petting, would you ? It was more of an expression of happiness (for their friendship anniversary) than anything else. I think paarthiban would have also thought so.
Or is it considered a standard technique to deliberately do so and leave the reader wondering?
I have not read a short story in a dozen years or so.
yes, it is a technique and I like to handle it to some degree :-)
"digital kadiyAraththil" style
No, it was not intended to be a 'seveties style'. I just wrote it, the first thing that came to my mind, btw whats the tamil words for 'digital' and 'analog' ?
movie dialogue styles
No chandra, I did not intend it to be cinematic. Its just that ezhil does not know how to put in words all his mixed feelings that he stops his sentence in the middle.
lot of sandhis were found incomplete or with
superfluous oRRu. If you do not mind, I seek your permission to employ passages from your story
as examples for the "oRRilakkaNam" thread.
Chandra, I had very basic education in Tamil grammar in School, Hindi being my language :-) so I am sorry about that and I will try to improve :-) btw, whats 'oRRu' ? You can use myb passages provided you pay me royalty :-)) just kidding, you can use them, but don't criticize me to much using them, I am just a fledgling writer !
Iam happy you liked the kavithai, you know what, the other story "oru aarambam" also has a veNpA, which you have already read :-) And I am surprised to see sexual connotations in my kavithai ! They are purely coincidental :-))
I would love to employ the veNpA technique to end every episode, but I don't think everybody would like to read veNpAs. I will do ti anyway, good idea, thanks.
- From: chandra (@ viking.delta-air.com)
on: Tue Mar 2 17:57:41
Thanks for your nice words.
"advances" might be inaccurate if ezhil never intended to "realize" his feelings
towards pArthi.
. I also agree that when I discovered this thread
it was on stumbling on one of the latter parts (iv or v). It could easiliy have colored
my judgment (and take substantial thrill out of discovering the surprises!).
What I basically wanted to say was that portrayal of pArthi's reactions
to ezhil's interactions (which *were* loaded with gay feelings) was somehow
missing in the narrative. The assumption here is that normal people
are able to sense abnormal feelings towards them, especially gay feelings.
n-andhini could sense that something was amiss but could not identify it.
Sure we seem to have a "kaikkiLai" relationship (one-sided love)
from ezhil to pArthi to go by the text and his words at the tete-a-tete with n-andhini.
Since n-andhini somehow did not like ezhil's behavior towards
pArthi (especially his kissing him on the cheek and calling him at strange
hours etc) which were beyond what one would see in normal man-to-man friendship,
one would expect to see pArthi squirm whenever ezhil makes physical
contacts with him if pArthi is not gay.
About "digital kadikAram", my focus was more on the whole phrase
rather than on english-tamil equivalency. It simply reminded me of the
late seventies when digital gadgets were novelty and many authors would
use such phrases to convey that nature of the gadget.
oRRu:
oRRu is a "mey" ezhuththu as opposed to uyir and uyirmey.
Babu, you are doing amazingly well for someone who had just a basic
education in Tamil grammar, with all these short stories and veNpAs.
As for royalty, the insight you get from all that dissection should be sufficient:-).
I am happy to see that you are embedding veNpAs in your stories.
Please do not hesitate to do so thinking that people may not be reading
them. We have to take leadership in reviving good tradtions and set examples to
the community and apply the following
principle:
"
Do not hesitate to do a good deed because teh rest of the wordl is not doing it;
Do not ever engage in a bad deed even if the the rest of the world is doing it".
Good deeds build up sublinearly whereas bad deeds build up exponentially fast.
Just like at the Grand Canyons: took 2 billion years (2000 million) to build
the mile-deep layers of earth there but only 6 million years for the Colorado
river to erode the land to a depth of 1 mile!
Good Show!
Thanks
Chandra
- From: kumaran (@ purgator.metabyte.com)
on: Wed Mar 31 14:49:14
, , ̺қ إ 鿺 Ϲ.. ̑ź ưѴ !
בⴳ.
- From: babu (@ 198.153.135.42)
on: Wed Mar 31 16:09:02
Thanks kumaran.
- From: Mukund (@ bart.americas.nokia.com)
on: Fri Apr 16 16:19:02
Babu,
Only now I found time to go through the whole story in 5 parts completely. Excellent piece of work. I liked the nila kavidhaigal. Language was very good too, especially when he keeps talking to Nandini and breaks down.
Story told in first person by the different characters created a tempo which culminated with Nandini, which was terrific.
Mukund
- From: babu (@ 198.153.135.42)
on: Sat Apr 17 10:48:49
Thanks Mukund, I am really glad you like this story (my favourite btw)
Want to post a response?
Back to the Forum